EXI 450 Tail Wag Update

I once again tackled the tail wag on the EXI 450. I have tightened up everything, still wagging.

Installed the all metal Tarot 450 Tail Slide. I found the it needed offsets between the arms and the blade control arms. An M2 lock nut fit the bill perfectly.

Changed the tail servo control arm to a smaller wheel, to decrease the mechanical advantage, to see if that will decrease the wag.

Reset the end points and have a pretty good range despite the small mechanical advantage.

It was dark and cold by the time I finished, so it will need to wait a few days.

I ordered a better tail servo to replace the cheap Emax 9257 I have on there now. I picked up  KST 215MG froem Amainhobbies and will install it when it arrives.

UPDATE 3/10/2020: Decreasing the mechanical advantage did the trick. There is virtually no wag now at 33% gain. Good enough for me! Not sure I will swap out the servo.

Amazing low cost aluminum signs!

On a whim I thought how nice it would be to have a metal sign in my workshop with my AMA and FAA numbers on it. I looked around and ended up on eBay, and bought one. I ordered the size I wanted, $11.50 shipped for a color 8" x 12" metal sign. I had created an image in PowerPoint, saved a full screen image as a screen shopt in jpg format. I sent it to the seller, he sent me a pic sample, I made one minor adjustment, and within a week I received this beauty. It is gorgeous! I love it and highly recommend them!

8 x 12 inches

In my shop!

The seller!

Look for this on eBay!

Flight Sim Setup

An HP p6654y I bought about 9 years ago with an AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz processor with 4 GB RAM in 64 bit (x64) System with AMD Radeon HD5570 graphics card, Windows 10, on a Panasonic 41 inch LED TV at 1776x1000 resolution. The keyboard is a Rii (Real Internet Idea) K18 RT518 Bluetooth keyboard from Amazon. I use a spare Spektrum DX7 transmitter. I bought the computer only, no monitor, I think for around $600 from BestBuy. I wanted to upgrade the graphics card to one my son replaced (he's a graphics super user), but it needed a power supply upgrade I wasn't interested in doing. This card works fine, excellent framerates and resolution.  The TV doesn't like the highes resolution making the edges go off screen, so I have to go one down, and magnify icons 125%. The keyboard is nice, but I haven't figured out how to drag and drop with the touch pad.

Spektrum WS100 Wireless Dongle for Real Flight 8 allows wireless connection with my transmitter. A few months after buying RF8 HH Edition, of course RF9 came out...

A SimStick with an HK Orange Reciever for Phoenix 5.5 Flight Sim, my preferred sim. Can do only 4 channels unless I wire in. Sad Phoenix went out of business. I can add a lot of aircraft, including my new Eflite UMX Pitts, not available on the Horizon Hobby RF8.

This setup works fine for me! I fly helis and planks, and need a lot of sim time, especially in the winter. My basement is unfinished so in the winter it's about 40F degrees down there, with two space heaters going O can get it to almost 60F. Its at the other end from my RC workshop.

Aircraft seem to float a bit in sims, 

Sweet!

Eflite Pitts S1S UMX

Finally pulled the trigger on the Eflite UMX Pitts! I wanted something to fly anywhere, around the yard. Have been thinking about it for over a year. Really looking forward to it!

This thing is tiny! It looks incredibly fragile, but people describe it as hardy.

Look how tiny this motor is. RCGeek said its noisy like a bunch of crickets.

Got these tiny Eflite 2S 280 mAh LiPOs.

I also picked up this parallel charging board. Charged one of the batteries at 0.2 mAH (1C), and later tonight or tomorrow I will set up and bind her to my DX8. Winds are brisk, so may not get to fly it for awhile.

It's always the weather...

Psych!

Sbach Evo 10cc Tweaking

Winter. New Hampshire. 18 degrees and sunny. Usually 20 mph winds. Too cold, too windy. Been a slow winter for the hobby.

The other day I took the Sbach and its misbehaving Evo 10cc out to the garage and accidentally drove the low battery way low, and fried the Orange 9 ch reciever. Didn't  know that was a thing. Ordered an 8 ch Orange as the 9 ch were NIS and it arrived in less than a week from Hobby King, a new speed that pleases me. Bound and installed. Later I also snuggled up and centered the rudder wires.

The issue has been a reliable idle. It's why she ended up in the dump lot...  I have tried everything, from rich to lean, and different endpoints on travel.  It's cold out, but I think I came close. Not close enough to put the cowl on. She has been so tweaky I will probably put a hole in the cowl to adjust it on the fly. 

She still runs rich and spews oil everywhere... I did manage the Mastwr Airscrew 13x8  so put the 12x8x3 back on.

I am sooo getting winter Hangar fever. I have got to fly something soon.

Housekeeping, not flying.

Hers's a surprise... the antenna snapped off bumping it on a door.

The HK500 is back.

And the work table has a nice new buther paper top.

FLYBAR EXI 450

Well, I did it.

I removed the ZYX Stabilization Gyro and the flybarless head, installed a metal 450 flybar head, and an Align GP780 tail hold gyro I've had laying around. Took me less than an hour to setup the mechanical head and to program the gyro. I took her out for a test spin. The gyro held, and she hovered somewhat controllable in a stiff breeze. The disc looked like it was tracking well, couldn't see so well in the darkening light. Dialed down the gyro to about 30%, I think. Need to work on the DR/Expo settings, check the tracking, but all in all I am pretty happy with it! I don't know why, but I was surprised the gyro worked. I didn't know I had one that worked, but there it is!

The original EXI canopy!

The sweet complexity of the flybar cage.

So complex, so simple!

Love that flybar!

I think the tail control lever on the tail was a bit too tight, and maybe it burned out the small tail servo while I set this up. I loosened up the control horn and since I found out it wasn't the servo but the orignial ZXY gyro causing the oscillation, I reinstalled the mini eMax servo. It's bigger and works well. I had to replace the aileron servo which was damaged, so I replaced both the pitch and aileron servos to match the Corona servo on the elevator. These are very strong quick servos. This thing is now rock solid. The system spun up nicely, was perfectly balanced!

I decided since I had one, and I think the other tail rotor head was a bit loose, I replaced it. Its nice and tight.

I am pretty psyched to have a flybarred 450, even though I don't enjoy flying these smalker helis. All I need now is a 700. Oh, and to learn how to reliably fly them!